In my last post, I talked about how I was going to “stop and smell the Christmas roses”. I decided that I was going to do something unique each day to take in the season. I don’t want to take the decorations down after Christmas and lament that I let the busyness of life keep me from enjoying this once-a-year time period that I look forward to each year. So, how did I do this past week? Let’s find out….

Saturday December 7th: Took my family to the 2nd Annual Dickens Christmas Festival at Simi Covenant Church in Simi Valley, CA. The church grounds inside and out were decorated to look like 19th century England. Had fun, although we got there later than we would have liked and it was colder than what we are used to. Now, I need to mention that we had this event on our calendar long before I made my enjoy-the-season commitment.

Sunday December 8th: Sang Christmas songs at church. Hey, it counts.

Monday December 9th: Listened to Christmas music in the car. I do this everyday but did nothing else Christmasy this day. Today I will play the Christmas music-in-the-car card.

Tuesday December 10th: Sorry. December 10th was a non-Christmas-acknowledging day. Did listen to music in the car but already used that.

Wednesday December 11th: Workdays are proving to be a challenge. I did do a little Christmas shopping for a work gift exchange.

Thursday December 12th: Attended my daughter’s Christmas program. She and the other members of her kindergarten class did a great job.

Friday December 13th: Christmas luncheon and gift exchange at work.

Saturday December 14th: Took my 2 year-old son to see our city’s Christmas parade. We weren’t able to be there for very long but it probably was long enough to fit the attention span of toddler. His favorite thing in the parade was the trash can being wheeled behind the horses to pick up the poop. Yep. Afterward, it was off to a day of Christmas shopping with my wife. I don’t mean stopping by the store to pick up a couple of things. I mean, real Christmas shopping. Later in the evening I showed my two kids Charlie Brown Christmas.

It wasn’t a perfect week, but all in all I think Christmas was celebrated this past week. We’ll try to keep the momentum going into the next week.